[abadpoli]

You’re completely off the mark here. I’ve worked at a Big4 company before on reports like this. These reports aren’t paid for by other companies at all. They’re internally funded and done by the internal research teams. The motivations behind them are numerous: marketing, having artifacts to help rank at the top of stuff like Gartner reports, and even because believe it or not the people that work there sometimes genuinely enjoy researching and publishing reports. Reports like this are the consulting company equivalent of a tech company’s engineering blog bragging about their new scalable infrastructure or whatever.

If you see a report published by a company that says “PwC did research for us”, then yes, it has likely been influenced by that company. But a report like this that is entirely PwC branded is not that.

[lq9AJ8yrfs]

I saw examples of both your and GP's experiences in my experience at a big4.

Unfortunately none I saw (sample size: a handful in detail and perhaps dozens to a skim) followed even basic statistical practices I had learned in undergraduate studies at a well-respected university.

There were clues that at least some of the parties involved knew better, but the imperative to publish completely overwhelmed any instinct for academic rigor.

It was dressed up as "eminence", which came after sold work and delivered work (in order) in annual reviews. Statistical rigor would probably help eminence, but there were faster paths to eminence.

[Agingcoder]

Comparing 74 and 75 with no confidence interval and claiming one was bigger than the other was rather bold I thought.

[emeril]

yeah, at least PwC + Deloitte are more legitimate than say KPMG or E&Y IMO

this is judging by all the time I spend reading their "handbooks" professionally